


A Winter I'll Never Forget

by ladylace616



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - High School, Character Death, Christmas, Drugs, Evil Step Mother Trope, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, High School, House Party, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lesbian Sex, Marijuana, Past Child Abuse, Sexual Content, Sexual Harassment, Skateboarding, lesbian!Arya, lesbian!Shireen, lesbians in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 06:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20848835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladylace616/pseuds/ladylace616
Summary: Modern Day High School AU. Arya Stark just began the first day of her junior year, and she noticed an unfamiliar face in the crowd...





	A Winter I'll Never Forget

**Author's Note:**

> TAGS: Arya/Shireen, Stannis/Melisandre, background Sansa/Theon, Gendry and Arya are BFFs, Lesbian!Arya, Lesbian!Shireen, Vitiligo, Non-consensual, Sexual Harassment
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own or profit from in any way the material written for the hit series Game of Thrones. That belongs to the genius that is George R.R. Martin and the directors D&D. (Even though they botched it big time.)
> 
> A/N: I don’t normally write first person, so I hope that doesn’t show. I haven’t found many stories with this coupling, but I just had to do it. I was considering writing an epilogue, tell me what you think at the end. I hope that Arya does not seem OOC, but if so, I humbly apologize and ask for constructive criticism. Without further ado, enjoy!

The first time I saw her, my interest was definitely piqued. I had been going to school with the same bozos for years. It was refreshing to recognize a new face in the junior class.

And what a face! I could see her getting bullied for it, but to me, she was singularly striking. I had never met a person with vitiligo before. I did not even know that that’s what it was on her face at first. I just thought it singled her out from all the rest.

Shireen was a dorky looking girl. She wore thick oval framed black glasses and had startling blue eyes. Her long hair was mousy brown except for one of her eyebrows. The eyebrow on the right side of her face was pale like the lashes of her eye. She had white, discolored patches along the right side of her face and down her neck. When she raised her hand to wave at the class, there were discolored patches on her hands, too.

She wore a long sleeve shirt and leggings with a skirt. She must be sweltering hot inside her get up, but I didn’t blame her for trying to cover up. I watched her take her seat in homeroom and made a mental note to ask Gendry about her after school.

….

  


It turned out, Shireen was in several of my advanced placement classes. She was very neat and proper, with impeccable manners. She had a sad quality about her, which was not a surprise given what I learned about her after school. 

I couldn’t wait to make it Jon’s shop. Gendry would be there undoubtedly, and I could grill him. I could have done so over text, but interrupting his busy day gives me more pleasure.

I hiked my grey backpack higher up on my shoulders after I got off my green vespa. For August, it was unseasonably hot as the sun beat down on the pavement under my feet. I made my way to the open front of the motorcycle shop, and sure enough, a sweaty Gendry was there to greet me.

“Arya! I don’t really have time right now,” he exclaimed when he saw me. 

“You never have time,” I quipped, and Gendry sighed. “That’s why I have to make time, ass, or we’d never see each other,” I grumbled.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Gendry groaned comically. He grabbed an oil stained cloth from nearby to scrub at his dirty hands, and stopped what he was doing to talk to me. 

“You know you only come over here to torment me, right?” he said with a good natured grin. “So what is it this time?”

“There’s a new girl named Baratheon at my school. That’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think? How many Baratheons do you know? Is she kin to you?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow at him curiously.

“Oh yeah, come to think of it, Dad did mention Uncle Stannis was moving back to town. My Aunt Selyse recently passed. That must be Shireen,” he replied.

“Well I’m sorry to hear an aunt I never knew you had died,” I said to him. Gendry shrugged his brawny shoulders. “How come you’ve never mentioned you had a cousin before?”

“I only met her a couple of times,” he shrugged again. “Aunt Selyse was some kind of religious nut, they did a lot of missionary work overseas,” he explained. 

“So what’s the deal with Shireen? What do you know about her?”

Gendry got a knowing look in his eye. “What’s it to you? How come you’re so interested, hm?” he playfully asked me. I punched him in the arm hard for good measure, and tried to avoid a blush. It was so not my style.

“Hey! Hey!” Gendry exclaimed and stepped back from me, holding up his hands in surrender. “I was eight or nine the last time I saw them at a family Christmas, so she was still little. She was kind of shy, liked reading and drawing the most, I think.”

“Reading, huh?” I asked, suddenly distracted. It was a safe bet I might catch her in the library, one of my favorite places. I hung out with Gendry for a little longer, and then hopped on my vespa and made for home. 

When I got there, Rickon was having an after school snack with mom in the kitchen. Bran was undoubtedly over at the Reed’s house with his best friend Jojen, like every other day. Robb had moved out years ago and Sansa was away at university finally. It was her freshman year at college, and I couldn’t wait for the semester to start to get her out of my hair. My sister and I have never gotten along, unfortunately. Probably had something to do with her being a girly girl and all her interests making me barf, and vice versa.

The house was quieter without she and I bickering constantly and our mom calling for peace. I dumped my bag by the dining room table and went to sit at the kitchen island bar with Rickon. Mom kept the bread out and proceeded to make me a sandwich too, without me even having to ask. 

“How was middle school?” I asked Rickon. He started sixth grade today and had loads to share with me and mom. When he was finished, I decided to go upstairs and do my homework. Afterwards, I would go and hang out with Lommy and Hotpie down at the quad near school.

It was a skate park so I was sure to take my skateboard with me. Both Lommy and Hotpie were typical stoners, but I only partook occasionally. They were passing a joint between them in one of the tunnels out of view from the public when I arrived.

“How’s it hanging, fellas?” 

Hotpie handed the joint to Lommy and managed to answer me with his mouth still full of smoke. “A little to the left,” he chortled, and started choking on the smoke as Lommy laughed.

“Ha-ha, very funny.” I rolled my eyes. “Are we gonna skate eventually?” I asked, impatiently holding up my skateboard. “I’m not getting any younger here.” 

Lommy groaned, “You just got here, and you’re already busting our balls?” 

“That’s my job,” I cockily shot back, and I wasn’t wrong. I was the unofficial leader of our group, as the one that dictated most of our activities. When the joint was finished, Hotpie held onto the roach and pulled a video camera out from his backpack. 

He was the one that documented all our serious footage and spills and our unofficial healer. When we bit the dust, he would supply the band-aids or help get us to the hospital when it was necessary. Because let’s not deny it, sometimes there were hospital trips involved. My family expected that of me as a rough and tumble kind of kid growing up.

I never outgrew my rambunctiousness. My mom kept hoping I would follow Sansa’s lead and want to participate in debutante society, but I could never do that. Mom had her hands full making up and shopping for Sansa, so I was happy to let her well enough alone in that department. She tried to make me compete when I was eleven, and it hadn’t ended well for anybody. She grudgingly learned her lesson and focused on pretty, perfect Sansa after that instead.

My dad always understood me. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be allowed any of the freedoms I currently enjoyed. When I started wearing boy’s clothing and acting like I really felt inside, he didn’t reject me or try to censor me. Now I wasn’t allowed the multiple piercings in my ears, but he tended to overlook my indiscretions such was his love for me. I reminded him of his dearly departed younger sister and I was allowed certain liberties.

Most everyone in our family traveled by town car, but I liked my independence. When I was sixteen, I got my license to drive a vespa and my father allowed it. One of the people I visited the most on it was my cousin Jon.

Jon grew up with us. His father’s family, the Targaryeans, had been involved in a terrible crime conspiracy. The end result being most of them murdered or never heard from again. Jon’s father Rhaegar was gunned down and confirmed dead. 

His mother, my dad’s beloved sister, died in childbirth shortly after. Dad felt duty bound to bring young Jon home with him to raise. His younger brother Benjen was a bachelor still. Mom and Dad were newlyweds expecting a baby of their own. Dad decided to adopt Jon, and he was accepted more or less as another one of my siblings growing up. 

He was my favorite older brother because he was always indulging my bad behavior. Robb was generally caught up with being Mr. Popularity at school when I was growing up. He was always away from home at football practice or rubbing elbows in town. I spent more time with Jon, a shy guy who didn’t want much from life. We shared a lot of the same interests, such as the TV program Ninja Warrior. We were both born athletes and enjoyed training together, pretending one day we would enter the competition. It was something even Bran delighted in playing with us, until he had his accident.

Bran was rock climbing when his harness malfunctioned and he fell. He suffered a spinal injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down. He was in and out of the hospital over the years, and that is where he met his best friend Jojen. Jojen was sickly and often confined to the hospital, so they met in the halls one day.

Bran and I both had the hotts for Jojen’s older sister Meera. She accompanied him everywhere. They became regulars around the house and I grew more and more attracted to Meera. Finally, one day, I confided in Bran that I liked her and he surprised me by saying he understood because he was in love with her, too. He never acted surprised or upset by my revelation, but certainly didn’t support me going after his crush. I backed off, and learned something new about myself.

No one else had caught my attention like Meera since Shireen. I briefly thought I might like Gendry, until he told me in no uncertain terms that he thought of me as a kid sister and it would never happen. I realized I only loved him as a friend, and now I was suddenly entertaining the idea of getting closer to the new girl in school.

I already knew her mother had died. I assumed she might be stuck up based on her mother’s religious ways, but it turned out much differently. Sure enough, my suspicions were correct and not long into the first semester, I started regularly running into Shireen in the library in the mornings. I would often go there to enjoy some silence before classes or to take a nap. 

Eventually, I started joining her at her table where she worked on her homework. We shared some of the same classes so we compared notes. I revealed that I was good friends with her cousin and she warmed to me. We discovered we were fans of the same book series and she was forever giggling at all of my jokes. I finally worked up the nerve to ask her over to my house to “help me with my homework.” (I didn’t need help, I was an A+ student and she surely realized this.)

Over the next few weeks, we became really close. I asked her to go with me to homecoming, as friends of course. She stayed the night at my house, and I became more familiar with the details of her very sad, solitary life.

Her father Stannis was a cold man. While she was spoiled with earthly goods, she felt emotionally distant from her father. As Gendry had said, Shireen had a non-traditional upbringing. She and her family often traveled overseas to convert indigenous people to Christianty and bring medical supplies and relief to the areas they visited. Stannis was influential and Selyse extremely devoted to the point of being a zealot.

Shireen admitted that her mother frightened her. She mentally abused her daughter, locking her in closets when she displeased her and often disparaging her for her skin condition. She lamented the fact that she didn’t have a pretty daughter and alleged that Shireen was a pox on their house sent to punish her. For what, she never said.

One night, Shireen admitted in tears that she was relieved when her mother died. She revealed that her mother hadn’t just died, she had committed suicide. She had slit her wrists and her father came home to find her in the bathtub. Shireen was locked in the hallway closet at the time her mother’s death occurred.

Shireen confessed to me that her mother killed herself because she had learned her father was having an affair with a younger woman. As much as Shireen disliked her mother, she hated her father’s fiance Melisandre more. “She’s a wicked woman,” Shireen said. “She’s been trying to convince Dad to send me to boarding school.”

I understood now why she never invited me over to her house. My house became a second home to her. I stopped hanging out with Lommy and Hotpie as much and started bringing her home with me after school most days. I was always secretly delighted when she held onto me as I drove us home on my vespa. I might have driven a little recklessly sometimes, just to get her to squeeze me a little tighter. I bought a second helmet which she promptly decorated with her name along the back in bright, glitter letters. I couldn’t get enough of her.

I was surprised that the feeling was mutual. Although she had grown up very religious, Shireen was very open minded. She wasn’t blind to my attraction. She was the one that initiated our first kiss. It was a week after homecoming, and we were leaving the motorcycle shop after having bothered Gendry sufficiently. The cousins were becoming friends through me, and I was glad to see them getting along.

We returned home and went upstairs to my room. I had just come back from the bathroom, when Shireen suddenly wrapped her arms around me in a hug. “I’m so lucky to know you,” she said to me. Then with her arms still wrapped around me, she leaned back and gave me a chaste kiss on the lips. It was enough to make me smile like a crazy person, from ear to ear.

“I’m the lucky one,” I replied. My hands rested at her waist, and I held onto her as I leaned in again and pressed a more insistent kiss against her lips. The pressure was innocent and sensual at the same time, and I never wanted to stop.

We had to come up for air eventually, though. We moved to the bed and laid on the queen sized bed lying across from each other on our sides. Shireen reached across to hold my hand and we stayed that way for a moment. Then, with a happy smile on her face, Shireen closed her eyes and turned over so that we could spoon. Nothing had ever felt more natural in my life, having her in my arms. I lovingly brushed my fingers up and down her arm in a soft caress, and we talked about how she’d never had a big family before, and she was glad to be getting to know her cousin Gendry.

….

Shireen had never been to a high school party before, either. I felt obligated to change that. That’s how we found ourselves at Justin Massey’s house one night. 

The house was full of people from the junior and senior classes. There was some drinking involved, and it didn’t take long for me to obtain red solo cups of our own. Shireen wrinkled her nose at the beer, but I didn’t mind downing a couple. I drank both hers and mine, and went back for more.

Of course, when you’re drinking, inevitably you have to pee. I was disappointed that the bathroom downstairs had a line, so I decided to go upstairs. There was a shorter line behind the door to the second floor bathroom. I debated going back for Shireen whom I’d left on the first floor, but ultimately decided I needed to pee too badly to delay.

It turned out to be a decision I would regret. While I was upstairs waiting my turn, Shireen was roped into a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven. She was shoved into a small hall closet with Ramsay Snow. She let him kiss her, and his kisses turned heavy quickly. She tried to push him off, but he was stronger than her and he put his hands under her shirt.

Shireen started to panic, and before she knew it, he had pulled her shirt over her head and was pawing at her breast through her bra. She was confused and scared, but she didn’t want to cry out and draw more attention. She willed herself to power through the interaction, and it was just as she closed her eyes to pretend she was somewhere else, that the closet door flew open.

There was a blinding light as someone snapped a picture of her. Shireen was horrified. Her shirt was on the floor of the closet and difficult to reach. It didn’t matter anyway, the damage was done. Half the party goers were in the room and saw her bare upper body in only her bra.

“Patches! Patches!” the party goers started to chant, and Shireen burst into tears. She pushed through the crowd, clutching her shirt to her chest. Ramsay was laughing along and pointing at her. She stopped by the front door long enough to jerk her shirt back over her head, and then she was running from the party.

I didn’t come back downstairs until it was too late. She had already left when I asked around. No one would tell me what had happened, and I went home worrying about her.

After three days of silence, I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I went to her house and her soon-to-be step-mother answered the door. She wouldn’t let me see her. “She’s too upset,” Melisandre told me and shut the door in my face.

I’ve never been one to be deterred, though. I circled around the house until I found Shireen’s window, and then I tapped and tapped until she finally pulled up the shades to see what was going on without.

“Arya!” she exclaimed. I couldn’t have felt more glad to see her. She didn’t come to school Monday or Tuesday. She opened her window so that I could climb through. 

As soon as I had, Shireen was clinging to me for dear life. I buried my face in her hair and held her tightly. Soon, I realized her shoulders were shaking with sobs and she was crying. She came apart in my arms and we moved to the bed. I sat beside her with my arm across her shoulders, and she told me the whole tale.

I became deathly quiet. I wanted to say reassuring things to her, but it was hard to comfort her when all I wanted to do was find Ramsay and rip off his head. I settled for kissing her brow and holding her hand as she cried.

As if what had happened to her wasn’t bad enough, she had more bad news. When she stumbled home in the middle of the night completely upset, she had no choice but to reveal to her dad what had happened. 

Stannis was furious and was going to pursue legal action against the teenager. It looked like Melisandre was going to get her wish after all. The fiery redhead convinced Stannis after this incident that public school was no place for their daughter. She said that Shireen should be attending the most prestigious private schools their wealth could buy. She readily offered up brochures she happened to have on hand about an all girl’s boarding school hours away.

“I’ve tried to tell him I don’t want to go, but he can barely look at me,” Shireen tearfully confessed to me. “He’s so embarrassed about what happened to me, it’s like he doesn’t want me to go through the shame of going back to school and facing all those people,” Shireen explained.

I couldn’t really blame him for feeling that way. I was mortified on behalf of my schoolmates and felt a tremendous knot of guilt forming in my stomach for not preventing it from happening. 

“We were only at the party because I insisted, I’m sorry,” I apologized to her. 

“It’s not your fault, I was having fun before that,” Shireen tearfully said. She leaned her head against my shoulder and my heart swelled with emotion at the thought of losing her. It was difficult for me to hold back tears of my own.

“So that’s why you haven’t been to school? Do you think he’s really going to enroll you?”

Shireen hiccoughed. “He already has. The new semester starts after the new year,” she woefully told me.

It was the middle of November. “You’re telling me we only have through the Christmas holidays to be together?” I asked her, not trusting my own voice. It was trembling with unshed tears, and we both knew it.

“Yes.”

I did cry, then.

….

The tears didn’t last for long. While it was true that Shireen would not be returning to school, there was nothing to stop me from attending. I was hell bent and determined to wreak revenge on Ramsay. 

I considered getting my brothers to help me beat him up. While the thought was very satisfying, I thought it was absurd that a senior like him should be enjoying himself at school on easy street while poor Shireen suffered at home, kept at home with Melisandre.

Instead, I decided to give Lommy and Hotpie a call. We arranged to plant drugs in his locker on the day the drug dogs were in school. Ramsay was busted and suspended for the remainder of the fall semester. He effectively was going to have to repeat his senior year. 

Revenge never tasted so sweet to me. 

…

The Christmas holidays were a special time for me and Shireen. She looked beautiful in all of her special Christmas gowns and ensembles. She loved ugly Christmas sweaters, and was always sporting bright colors in comparison to my mostly black wardrobe.

Melisandre went on holiday and Shireen could not have been happier. While Melisandre was away, Stannis allowed her stay the week at my house. We definitely made the most of it. We helped Rickon make a snowman out in the cold. We went on walks through the frozen winterland that was the park near my house. I would buy her hot chocolate to warm her hands, and always adore her hats with the puffs on top.

“I hope this winter lasts a lifetime,” I said to her as she walked with me, hand in the crook of my arm. She leaned in and kissed me.

She bought me a fluffy grey scarf and matching gloves. She bought me wolf figurines she found online and told me that they made her think of me. In the warmth of our kitchen, she and I would help Rickon decorate christmas cookies that my mother baked. I was going to miss the sound of her laughter and her impeccable manners in front of my mother. My mother certainly appreciated having another little lady in the house.

Over Christmas break, Robb and Sansa returned home with another addition. Theon Greyjoy was Robb’s best friend since he had moved to the city. He worked at the gym with him as a personal trainer. He was Sansa’s new boyfriend, and he was quite vulgar when he thought no one was looking.

I caught him feeling Sansa up in the TV room one night. I didn’t know why she went for these older men, but to each their own. I shrugged and tried to scrub the event from my memory. 

Shireen and I grew closer than ever. For christmas, I bought her a silver chain and heart necklace with the eternity symbol in the middle of it. She bought me a whitegold Fossil watch for Men with gold inlay.

We took our relationship to the next level over the week that she stayed at my house. We slept in the same bed every night. While Theon was forced to sleep in a different room than Sansa’s, my mother remained willfully ignorant about my sexual preferences. It turned out to be in my favor at the time.

We took full advantage of the privacy. Many a night, she would let me wriggle her out of her cute pink sleeping gowns. I always wore boxer shorts and tank tops, or just t-shirts and underwear. 

It didn’t take long for us to give into temptation and do a little exploring. I always treated her so gently. The first time she let me look at her, it was still mostly dark in my room. Only in the dim closet light in the corner of the room did she let me first get a good look at her.

She pulled her nightie over her head and stood in only her underwear before me. Her abdomen was mostly covered in her vitiligo. Her breasts were speckled with the bright discolored skin and her rib cage was generously dusted with the discoloration. Her pelvis region though was not as touched and had the healthy pink skin of the rest of her. The vitiligo went down her left leg starting at the knee and enveloping her whole calf. 

I hoped she could see the lust in my eyes as I advanced on her. She was standing at the foot of the bed, and I crawled across the bed to be near to her. I cupped her face in my hands and I whispered against her lips, “Beautiful.”

My hands acted of their own accord. I seemed to _ need _ to touch her. One of my hands was holding her by the back of the head as we kissed, and my other ghosted over her bare stomach. I settled that hand on her waist, and played with the thin waistband of her lacey underwear.

“Can I?” I asked, pulling away from her. I could actually feel her breath stop as she slowly nodded. I took great care in pulling her panties down her hips and legs and she stepped out of them. She was nude before me. The sparse bush between her legs was untouched by the vitiligo and matched her mousy brown hair. It was my turn then.

I hurriedly yanked my shirt over my head, and was left only in my boy cut panties. She advanced forwards and knocked me onto my back on the bed playfully. I propped myself up on my elbows, and she slithered my panties down my legs and dropped them on the floor.

Then, she crawled over the top of me and rested there against me as we made out. The feeling of her body against mine was electrifying. I needed more, and before long we were gyrating our hips against each other. I straddled her and pushed her down against the mattress, smothering her in a deep and searing kiss. I ground myself against her, and she panted in my ear as we ground our pelvises together with sweet urgency. 

Eventually, she cried out. I wasn’t long behind her and we slumped into a pile of lifeless bones in each other’s arms. Our happiness could not have been more complete.

…

Of course, nothing good ever lasts.

All too soon, the New Year rolled around. Melisandre had returned from her sabbatical and our good time was cut short. Just two weeks later, Shireen was being put on an airplane and sent across the country to her new life at Oakwood Fine Arts Academy for Girls. 

I clung to her at the airport. I wasn’t ashamed of my love for her. No one else had ever loved and accepted me so completely. I hoped she felt the same way about me. I knew she did. I couldn’t stop myself from crying as we said our final goodbye.

I stayed to watch her plane take off. As I saw the plane soar into the air and whisk her out of my life, I knew that I would never forget her.


End file.
